This project deals in part with the public realm (or lack thereof) in Thamesmead, and more particularly with the social infrastructure that supports its publicness. While Thamesmead has a notoriously illegible and disorienting public landscape, rife with barriers and inaccessible routes, public life still finds a way to manifest in spatialities rarely considered or studied. Four key sites were identified and analysed to better understand how public life emerges, and to inform interventions that can improve the experience of inhabiting Thamesmead. The four sites - a McDonald’s, a Unitarian Church, the Hawksmoor Youth Hub, and Birchmere Park - at first glance may not seem to have a lot in common, but these institutions and others like them form the bedrock of ‘public’ life. In hoping to effect some fundamental and intensive change in the publicness of Thamesmead, the Urban Platform is conceived. It is a strategy for public space development informed by learnings from these sites; the intervention addresses both spatial and organisational fragmentation currently present in Thamesmead, and re-imagines how public space can increase connectivity across the landscape and between people. Lastly, this study emphasises that aspects of public life which may appear ordinary or even mundane, can provide alternative perspectives and enrich future development plans, strengthening the soft and intangible support networks which already exist.
